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Titian's colouring was that of "an autumn day" but Tintoretto's that of a "dismal night." Yet these very qualities in Tintoretto's work made him great. This painting in the Academy at Venice tells the story of how a Christian slave who belonged to a pagan nobleman went to worship at the shrine of St. Mark. That was unlawful.
"No, dear," said her mother, sympathizingly, "I don't like it either. You and I will choose the pictures we are to look at long. There are many of Tintoretto's that you will enjoy, I know, many from which you can learn about the artist, as well as from such as these." "We cannot doubt the dramatic power of Tintoretto, can we?" asked Mr. Sumner, with a suppressed twinkle of the eye.
Certain of Tintoretto's sayings prove his humour to have had a caustic turn. Being once much harassed by a crowd of spectators, including men of civic eminence, he was asked why he painted so quickly when Bellini and Titian had been so deliberate. "They had not so many onlookers to drive them to distraction," he replied.
"Very well," the artist cried; "I will make the ceiling a present to you." As there was a rule of their order forbidding them to refuse a present, they had to accept Tintoretto's.
His dying prayer was that all Christians who prayed to him in the name of Jesus might be delivered from pestilence. Shortly after Rocco's death an angel descended to earth with a table written in letters of gold stating that this wish had been granted. In the carvings in the chancel, the bronzes on the gate and in Tintoretto's pictures in the neighbouring church, much of this story may be traced.
What matters is that the picture is at once Tintoretto's simplest work and his most lovely. One can do nothing but enjoy it in a kind of stupor of satisfaction, so soothing and perfect is it.
It serves to show that if the artist was far beyond the stage of imitation or even of assimilation on the larger scale, he was, at any rate, affected by the Roman atmosphere in art. For once he here comes nearer to the realisation of Tintoretto's ideal the colour of Titian and the design of Michelangelo than his impetuous pupil and rival ever did.
There is nothing within it so entrancing as its exterior always with the exception of Tintoretto's, "Bacchus and Ariadne." The Ducal Palace is Gothic made sprightly and sunny; Gothic without a hint of solidity or gloom.
The halo with which the Byzantine mosaïcists surrounded the faces of their saints, the glory of golden light that gleams about the figure of Christ in heaven in Tintoretto's decorations, the blank bright walls of the Doge's palace undermined by darkling and shadowy arcades, the refrain of a Provençal song, the sharp shadow under the visor of Verrocchio's equestrian statue, the thought-provoking chiaroscuro of Rembrandt's figure paintings these expedients are all designed to attract attention to the essential elements of a whole of many parts.
"I will take you to see Tintoretto's pictures or many of them at least," added Mr. Sumner. "He stands alone by himself." In a Gondola. And on her lover's arm she leant, And round her waist she felt it fold, And far across the hills they went In that new land which is the old.
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